


There Is A House

by Thimblerig



Series: Musketeer Shorts [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (not graphic), Alcohol Withdrawal, Author's Favorite, Bodily Fluids, Constance is a good bro, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series, keeping the 'functional' in front of 'alcoholic' since 1626
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4247913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which the Circumstance of Their Acquaintance is Never Discussed.</p><p>(Or if you prefer, "Angsty Athos inna shirt".  I'm not deep.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is A House

**Author's Note:**

> That question that keeps bothering me: how did Constance know Athos?

Paris is a great mistress of a city, a fine lady adorned with jewels and flowers, her skirts trailing mud. Under her mantle anything can be found, if one is patient and knows who to ask. On the Rue des Fossoyeurs there is a house and a woman who will, if her husband is away, and if there are no lodgers, and if the money is right, be of assistance to a man who has needs of a certain nature. 

Athos finds her house at midnight and leans wearily in the doorway until she opens the door. She nods curtly and ushers him inside, into an amber-gold den of polished wood and white-plastered walls lit by a cheerful fire in a grate and a few candles set by a work-table. She whisks away half-finished white-work - a linen chemise set with stitches fine enough for the queen - and lets him sit while she counts out his livres and locks them carefully away in her husband's strongbox. "Eight days," she says flatly.

Athos nods. It should be enough, and he is fortunate to find her available for that long. He sets trembling hands to his sword-belt and divests himself slowly of his gear - his fine sword and his pistols, his feathered hat and the knives in his boots, his leather jacket, his neckerchief. He shrinks into himself, hands on knees, shoulders tight. She sets her fingers to his chin and makes him look at her. He can see no condemnation in her eyes, but no pity either.

There is a Latin Quarter doctor and a midwife he knows who will perform the same service, but the one steals and the other talks. This is better. And pity, he thinks, would break him.

"You'll do," she says briskly, and thunks a steaming bowl of broth on the table. "Finish that and I'll take you upstairs."

Later he sits on the narrow bed of her spare room and puts his head in his hands.

She locks the door behind her.

MMM

On the first day he paces. He has a thirst to swallow an ocean, and the gallons of salty broth she gives him will not touch it. At day's end she brings fresh linen and a clean chamber-pot, offers him something to read. He thanks her, distant but courteous, and lies awake all night, shivering in the late summer heat.

MMM

On the second day he becomes aware of the smell, a noxious odour that emanates from his sweat and skin and makes him a putrid thing. He leaves the little book unread, and barely swallows the invalid food she gives him - bread sopped in milk, dried weeds boiled into a tea, a jelly cooked out of calves' feet - all of it slimy and of a peculiar taste. She brings up a mop and bucket in the afternoon and suggests that he use it. He declines to reply.

MMM

When he wakes on the third day he knocks on the door and requests his release.

"For my furlough is surely over and my friends will be missing me. I thank you for your assistance, and I am now quite well."

Silence.

"Open the door!"

He curses her then, low, vicious, and filthy, and she gives in trade a short, harsh, bark of laughter. He slumps against the door, rests his palms and forehead against the wood and shudders, beset with terrors. He will be late for duty and Treville will turn him away. His friends will miss him. Sharp-eyed Aramis, clever Porthos, they will know he is not in his usual haunts and they will start to look. Who knows what trouble they might stir up? They could get hurt without him, killed, and it will all be his fault. He blinks his eyes, beset with an image of them, even now, lying ashen and still in a crooked alley. He slams his fist against the door. It were almost better that his friends find him here, at this moment, and see this.

MMM

On the fourth, grey, day she wraps his hands with soft cloths, binding them at the wrist with bandages, that he might not rip his own flesh with the scratching. In the afternoon she comes up-stairs with a work-basket and mends clothes, her fingers moving swift and sure. They listen to the rain.

MMM

The next morning, on Mercredi, he is asked to be quiet if he can while she has visitors. He lies on the bed and listens as fragments of voices drift up from below:

_... the light up-stairs? Why, nothing but a candle in the window, to beckon my Bonacieux home..._

_... but if you were only a little nicer to your husband he wouldn't be off on so many business trips and you might have had a few precious babies of your own..._

_... the sword? What an enquiring mind you have. My brother left it upon his last visit..._

_... poor, dear Guillaume, but doesn't he..._

_... quite able to rig himself out for the troop and leave a spare blade here..._

_... you'd know about having more than one blade, dear..._

"Nasty old cat," she mutters later, hands moving so fiercely on the shirt she's mending that it rips and she has to do the seam over.

"All women are perfidious," he advises her solemnly.

"Oh _you..._

MMM

The nightmares find him on the sixth day, vicious things of war and dread and twisting mazes. He sees his estate in flames, and troops of musketeers lying dead in the snow; he walks into his house and his brother lies dead but who holds the knife is always different. Sometimes it is himself and the sticky red (noble) blood drips to the floor like anyone else's. He dreams of forget-me-nots dropping into a meadow.

She lets him lean on her shoulder whenever he wakes and bury his sobs in her skin; she soothes him like an ailing child when he mutters, "It is all my fault, how can it not be?"

And, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, it must have been a mistake..."

And, "Anne, I just had the most horrible dream."

His wife covers his eyes and kisses his temple. "Then sleep again, and dream of something better."

MMM

On the seventh day she carries up a can of hot water and washes him, moving very slowly as she lifts one arm or another, as she draws the wet cloth across the curve of his spine.

"Why?" he asks, as she strops her husband's straight razor and then lathers up his chin.

"Four brothers," she says, "and three of them are... like you. The youngest helps me sometimes." Her red mouth curls into a Cupid's Bow of a smile. "They're all ever so particular about their beards, the bleeding lot of them. Chin up."

MMM

On the eighth day he wakes with his head clear and his limbs springing with vigour. The outside sky is dark shading into deep blue and the birds sing as if dawn would be hauled forth with the glory of their voices alone. They eat breakfast together at her kitchen table: warm bread and preserves, mugs of precious hot chocolate, slices of pickled lemon. She looks away politely as he puts on his accoutrements, assembles himself into an officer and gentleman, and sets himself to leave before the neighbours wake to ask awkward questions.

"Until next time," she says, a not-quite-benediction. 

He touches the brim of his hat. "Madame Bonacieux."

_fini_

**Author's Note:**

> \- I'm honestly not sure if I've been writing an interesting facet to Constance or just making her totally out of character. How a person acts in this situation would be different from every-day life, I guess. And I suppose I wanted her to have a standing-place, aspects of her life where she totally owns that shit, outside of an unfulfilling marriage and a desperate urge to have an adventure, any kind that's offered. You're free to dislike this characterisation, is what I'm saying.
> 
> \- I don't have any RL experience with detoxing, so I got a lot of my information from a Cracked article, http://www.cracked.com/article_18824_5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-quitting-drinking.html and this website: https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/ Please forgive me if I've made any egregrious errors - and feel free to let me know :-)
> 
> \- In that era plain water, especially in a crowded, dirty city like Paris, wasn't entirely safe to drink. Since alternatives like tea, coffee, and chocolate were horribly expensive, and watered wine or small beer were disease free ways to get your fluids, staying off the sauce for good must have been... difficult.
> 
> \- Not actually sure if pickled lemons were a thing in 1630s France (it's hard to find references to pre-haut cuisine) but they seemed to really like salty-sour tastes, so let's just go for it 'kay?
> 
> \- I was stuck for titles. I mean, really stuck. Any alternative suggestions will be gladly considered.


End file.
